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This sort of thing had happened too often, and I made up my mind I would not live in this moral fog another moment. So I went to Ada. "Ada," I said, "I am your mother, and I think I have a right to ask you a question. I want to know this: what has that young man been doing?" "I suppose you mean Harry," Ada answered. "He hasn't been doing anything.
"You are discharged for inefficiency," he said. "You are reporting a side-wheeler for a screw-propeller." "There is no signal in the code for such modern inventions," I retorted. "I suppose the fog of your practical realism is too obscuring for you to see that clipper just coming in," I continued, as a full-rigged ship spread its filled sails against the glowing sky of the late afternoon.
As the night wore on the silence grew deeper and deeper, and only at rare intervals he heard the sound of wheels on the main road a hundred yards away, where the horses went at a walking pace owing to the density of the fog. The echo of pedestrian footsteps no longer reached him, the clamour of occasional voices no longer came down the side street.
Far out in the depths of the woolly fog a glowing spot appeared; the grey mass around grew alive, began to move, to redden, to thin out as if it were streaming up in flames. Ah! now he knew! It was the globe of the sun, rising out of the sea. On board, every point where the night's moisture had lodged began to shine in gold. Each moment it grew clearer and lighter, and the eye reached farther.
There was a bubble of a sea, for the wind had been against the tide previous to its changing, and we were then about six or seven miles from the French coast, just between Boulogne and Cape Grisnez, lying to for the fog to clear away. As soon as we saw the frigate we knew that she would board us, and we were all in a terrible fright."
If it had not been for the fog which cast a gray mantle over everything, the general aspect of this famous Cape Tchelynskin was not particularly disagreeable; certainly there was nothing to justify the name of Cape Severe, which it had borne for three centuries.
I also discovered that the webs of the little spiders in the road, when saturated with moisture, as they were from the early fog this morning, exhibit prismatic tints. Every thread of the web was strung with minute spherules of moisture, and they displayed all the tints of the rainbow. In each of them I saw one abutment of a tiny rainbow.
A heavy fog came on, and entirely hid them; and Aratus, with 100 picked men, came to the rock at the foot of the city wall, and there waited while Erginus and seven others, dressed as travellers, went to the gates and killed the sentinel and guard, without an alarm.
He hummed the last words softly under his breath, then swept one hand across his eyes with a movement of impatience. "Old men's brains grow addled," he continued. "They become clouded with a fog through which only the memories of the past and the days of their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia as if I were home-sick and wanted to go back to it, yet I never do.
You won't?... Very well, then, I must deal with them, while you go off with the lantern and search for Mrs. Treacher." "You are a brave man," said she; "and and I think by the look of them you are going to have great fun." The Commandant stood for a moment rubbing his chin and staring after the lantern, as it vanished in the fog.
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